Maestro of a New Language

On the afternoon of June 14, 2001, Mario Miragliotta was driving near Green River, Utah, on his way to Aspen, Colo., where he was to participate in the American Academy of Conducting. Afterward, the 31-year-old with the twinkling eyes and wry smile was to go to Texas to lead the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. But on this day, he was too tired to be behind the wheel. He fell asleep. His 1993 Isuzu Rodeo rolled several times, breaking his neck. At the University of Utah Hospital, where he spent more than a month, doctors inserted a titanium frame to hold his C5 and C6 level vertebrae together.

He was paralyzed from the chest down. He could barely move his arms and neck, and his hands were frozen in position. The native of Sao Paulo, Brazil, had once stood before orchestras, his shoulders, head, arms, hands, fingers, even his hips eliciting sounds of joy or sadness or whimsy or beauty. Now he couldn’t turn a page of music.

Miragliotta was assistant conductor of the Los Angeles-based American Youth Symphony and had been appointed music director of the Santa Barbara Youth Symphony and assistant conductor of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. A rising talent, he had earned a master’s in viola performance from Yale and another master’s, in conducting, from USC in 1999. His style on the podium had been highly animated. He was in continuous motion, setting tempo, bringing in the violins, muting the tympany. Few who have picked up the baton have not wished for a third hand or a second set of eyes.

Miragliotta could not stand up. He had limited movement in his arms. Yet he did not hesitate. He believed he could learn a new visual language, if musicians would be patient. Maybe he could rehabilitate his upper body. He also knew that other conductors had overcome handicaps, including James DePriest, music director and conductor of the Oregon Symphony. DePriest, a polio victim, moves now with crutches and braces and conducts while seated.

Miragliotta’s first opportunity to lead an orchestra came with the American Youth Symphony. By then he had recovered much use of his arms. He had himself strapped into his wheelchair for rehearsals. “Because I cannot use my hands to turn pages, I have to memorize everything. I’m using my arms to conduct since my hands are not really functional. I could muscle the orchestra before my accident. I could grab someone by their collar and pull them through the whole concert. And many conductors do that . . . I cannot do that anymore.”

He found that the best way to correct mistakes was to stop the music and give instructions orally. It was cumbersome, but the musicians were receptive. “Once you raise your arms regardless of whether the rest of your body or your hands are working, the musicians feel your energy,” he says. “It’s almost like telepathy.”

How did the orchestra adjust? “We’re so used to him being so alive, walking around, being really in our face about what he wanted to do,” says Deborah Klak, principal second violinist with the American Youth Symphony. “You see this broken body, but within him there is so much life. You can tell when there’s an exciting part . . . the whole podium and the wheelchair shake.” The orchestra learned to read Miragliotta’s “expressions and his eyes as opposed to the body,” she says, a form of communication that musicologist Karl Haas described in his book “Inside Music” as perhaps more important than elegant hand movements. As Klak explains, “There’s a lot in a conductor’s face when they want some passage to be really sad or funny or intense.”

That works better for the strings, which are seated closest to the conductor, than for musicians seated farther away, such as Kazem Abdullah, who was principal clarinet at the time. But even from that distance, Abdullah says, the musicians eventually learned Miragliotta’s new language. “He still has a strong essence of pulse . . . you can still feel the rhythm from him, so therefore it’s not difficult to follow from as far back as my section. You can tell when somebody has the pulse of the music inside of them . . . and from there finds some way through their body to show it.”

Eight months and two operations after the accident, Miragliotta led the youth symphony in concert at UCLA’s Royce Hall. It was a first giant step. Mark Artusio, the symphony’s orchestra manager, says the question now is not “how much Mario will recover or what he’ll be able to do when he recovers. Mario has recovered. If he wants to be a conductor, he’s going to learn how to be a conductor this way. He’s got the ears, which is the most important thing in conducting . . . he’s got the musical talent.”

But Miragliotta has conducted just that one concert. He moved to San Diego for regular exercise sessions with Ted Dardzinski, founder of Project Walk, which has helped some people walk again through the unconventional method of removing them from their wheelchairs to exercise their paralyzed limbs. The American Youth Symphony invited Miragliotta to return, but his stepped-up exercise regimen, which consumes three to four hours daily, could make that difficult. He also had an offer from Classics for Kids, a San Diego-area organization that plays for children.

For now, he continues to struggle with unstable blood pressure, fatigue, spasms and breathing difficulties, but he is sleeping better. His upper body strength has improved, although he cannot brush his teeth without his wife or mother first attaching a brace with a toothbrush to his right arm. He cannot pick up his son Sergio. There are things he cannot do now and may never do.

One thing he holds on to is the ability to tap into the intangible-the pulse-and convey his musical ideas to his players. No one knows if it will be enough to sustain his career. For now he feels fortunate to be making progress. “Most quadraplegics can’t go back to the work they were doing.” he says. “How many careers can you do where you have to remain in a chair and you can’t use your hands? God, it’s tough, but in a way I’m very lucky.”

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Mark Edward Harris is a Los Angeles-based photographer and writer. His last piece for the magazine was about renowned Mexican photogrpaher Manuel Alvarez Bravo.